Paypal CFO Reports Lack of Interest in Crypto Due to Volatility

John Rainey, Paypal CFO said in an interview with CNBC last May 16th that PayPal has little interest in digital currencies because price volatility threatens the viability of their merchants’ businesses.

Centralized payment service PayPal was one of the first companies that accepted cryptocurrencies, allowing merchants the option to accept Bitcoin (BTC) on the platform as far back as 2014, when BTC was worth around $400.

Nowadays, though, Rainey stated that PayPal currently doesn’t see much interest in digital currencies from their merchants, as the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies can cause losses, explaining:

“If you’re a merchant and you have, let’s say, a 10 percent margin on a product that you sell and you accept Bitcoin, for example, and the very next day it moves 15 percent, you’re now underwater on that transaction… You could have something that appeals to consumers, but if merchants don’t accept it, it’s of little value. Right now, we don’t see a lot of interest from our merchants.”

“But if it’s something that stabilizes in the future and is a better currency, then we’ll certainly support that,”

Rainey adds.

Rainey’s statement supports PayPal’s patent filed in March, which aims to speed up cryptocurrency transaction times. If the technology can be implemented on a large commercial scale, it could allow cryptocurrency payments to be processed between merchants and buyers instantly and off-chain, eliminating large transaction fees and long verification periods.

PayPal, launched 1998, has around 237 million registered active users, with a payment volume of $132 billion in the first quarter of 2018 alone, up by more than $30 billion since the first quarter of 2017.

In related news, Square CEO Jack Dorsey expressed optimism towards global adoption of digital currency. At the Consensus conference, Dorsey shared his vision that cryptocurrencies are the future of a legitimate means of global payment, which reaffirms his previous comments that Bitcoin will become the world’s “single currency” within a decade.

Todd is a computer tech enthusiast from the Philippines with a penchant for gaming. He joins Ibinex News after a stint freelancing for a print magazine. Todd is an Undergraduate of Education and later took up Information Technology courses. He started his professional career providing technical support for several computer and technology related firms. He later started free-lance writing for an online blog and contributed articles to a short-lived print magazine. Todd does not own any cryptocurrencies at the moment, as he is looking at which one would be the best choice to own, and he believes in the future potential of Blockchain as an industry game-changer.

You can also mail her/him at [email protected] to discuss anything related to her/his reports.

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